Lions 26, Texans 23
DAN CAMPBELL: You know, credit to DeMeco and that crew, man. They fought. We knew they would. They were ready to go. Man, they gave it everything.
That was a hard-fought game. We had to fight our way back in there. Look, I'm proud of the guys. There's things that obviously we have to clean up, but man, they just wouldn't go away. Our guys wouldn't go away.
For our defense to play the way they played, you know, I thought -- listen, I thought our defense played good early. We just had one play here, one play there that hurt us, but the second half you come out, and it's four punts, two picks, and a missed field goal. That's huge.
We talked about it at halftime. We just need to get our takeaways. So the defense did that, and I knew we would wake up on offense. It was just a matter of time. Once we were able to pull it within one score, you felt like, Okay, now we're starting to find our way here.
Man, our fans helped. With about eight minutes left in the fourth they helped. They got a false start over there on them, caused one. Our fans are huge traveling like they did. Anyway, proud of the guys. Big win.
Q. Jake Bates came through again. You have talked about your confidence in him. Just take us through your emotions.
DAN CAMPBELL: Well, look, let me start here. Thursday at the end of practice we did an end-of-game situation live offense versus defense, and we were at the minus-46 seconds left, one time-out for the win.
So Goff hit Saint and got it to the plus-43, and there we are at one second left after the time-out and rolled him out there, and he nailed it. This was outside, slight wind in his face. So, man, you could just feel the team as well as all of us. There's just a confidence in, Okay, man, that was big.
So it was the first thing I thought of when we got there, and I'm looking at it and thinking about, you know, you go for this, and I just felt good about it. I just felt like he was going to make it, and he did. He stepped up and nailed it. That was great.
Q. Is that the most confident you've felt in a kicker (indiscernible)?
DAN CAMPBELL: Yeah, probably. Look, I had a lot of confidence in Badge. I really did, but I think probably at this point, yeah, I would say that's a fair assessment.
We're getting some pretty longer kicks here. I don't particularly like to do that all the time, but sometimes when you need it, you get in a game like that, and listen, he's answered the bell. He is answering the bell.
Q. (Off microphone)
DAN CAMPBELL: Huge. If we don't play defense like that, we don't win that game because, look, we did what we had to do at the end offensively. We found our way, and we were able to get in position to score some points, but without the defense, you know, five turnovers, it's hard. It's hard to win that way.
That's really where it begins, and then we were a little off on some stuff. So defense doesn't play that way, you know, this game -- we don't have a chance to come back and win it.
So I can't say enough about A.G., man. We made a couple of adjustments at halftime, but we also knew -- like I mentioned earlier, we were playing good ball. It was one play here, one play there. One player here, one --
Once we kind of got rid of that stuff and kept playing the way we were playing, man -- look, C.D., I know it didn't work out, but C.D.'s interception coming out at halftime, we talked about it.
Man, it just happens like that. The guys believe. You know, hey, we can make this happen. It's going to happen.
For our defense to have to reload again, three and out or interception on offense, and they have to -- man, they're off the bench, on the field, off the bench, on the field. Just to continue to -- man, that's a credit to those guys. A.G. is a huge part of that.
Q. (Off microphone)
DAN CAMPBELL: It's good. You know, inches are right down the middle. As far as I'm concerned it's right down the middle. Look, I'm excited. I was excited. That's a hard-fought game. You're living in the emotions of that type of game.
You know, you realize when you get in that one, you are playing the long game. You've got to do it one possession at a time and just find a way to get this thing all the way down to the end of the game because you're not going to be able to do it as far down as we were. You're not going to be able to do it within just a couple of possessions.
So we hung in there. For him to just step up and make those kicks, you know, it's good, and his confidence is growing.
Q. (Off microphone)
DAN CAMPBELL: You know what, here's the thing. I know this is -- all right. Forget the one right before halftime. That was a Hail Mary. We were just trying to get it up, hope and a prayer. Didn't work out.
So now you're down to four. Really only one of them was kind of, Eh, okay, I got it. The rest of those, it just kind of was circumstance. There's some things that happened. The one to LaPorta, it was a good throw. That's what we tell him to do.
LaPorta is a little late getting his head around, and then he doesn't quite get himself to the ball, but the timing says, Yeah, rip that ball.
We were a little off. He and Jamo. Jamo should be a little higher angle. So there's just these little circumstances that come into play. So for me I'm not going to tell him anything because I don't feel like this is, Oh, man, what are you doing? These weren't ill-advised throws.
It wasn't our day. When it's not your day and you can still win, that's a sign of a good team.
Q. The pressure that you got I guess from the whole team.
DAN CAMPBELL: Yeah, big.
Q. (Indiscernible)
DAN CAMPBELL: We knew going into this game a big -- we kind of talked about there's been so much put on our back end, our secondary. We've asked them to do a lot. Particularly since Hutch went down.
This was the game, though, that we really, really -- we challenged our D-line. This was one where we said, You guys got to win. Mac, you have to go and take this game over to an extent, and all those guys.
We felt like we could have success, and I felt like we did that. Man, we shut that run game down. We were able to apply pressure, particularly Mac, and it helped us. It helped us. So those guys answered the bell.
Q. (Off microphone question about LaPorta injury)
DAN CAMPBELL: Yeah, he's just got -- I don't know. I don't know how significant it will be. It's not something like -- this is not he's going to be out four weeks, whatever. It's just maybe he might miss this week. We'll see.
He's got a little sprain in here, kind of the AC joint. We'll just -- you know, he tried to go back in, and it just didn't -- it wasn't quite right. Didn't quite feel right.
We'll get it checked tomorrow, see where it's at, see how significant it is and just take it day-to-day.
Q. How do you feel about your team at this stage of the season?
DAN CAMPBELL: Look, I feel really good about our team. They haven't done anything that would surprise me negatively. They're exactly what I thought they would be, the fight they got in them, the ability to reload, reload one more time on the road.
After the win we had in Green Bay and to face an opponent, a dang good opponent that plays damn good defense and takes care of the ball for the most part, we knew they were going to be ready to go. It says a lot.
Like every week for us we just have to stay focused on what's right in front of us, and I really believe if we do that, we're always going to have a really good shot. The odds are going to favor us that we can win every week.
You know, listen, we're in it now. There's no byes. There's no nothing. We're in the meat of it. Head down, and we just keep plowing forward.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports